Ride Lugged

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everyone was sitting in my backyard, about to watch anchor man on the 6 foot projection screen.  yay.  so i went for a nite ride out on my local 8 mile farm country loop.  nite rides are usually 95 percent great: sometimes they are a little too cold, and you arnt ready for it, sometimes you get bugs in your teeth if it is too close to sundown, sometimes you have a semi scary run it with a motorist.  tonite it was the smell.

Everything gets sharpened at nite, no where more so than near a body of water.  Sounds, little movements, and smells become more noticeable.  Your wheels are slightly out of round,  your tires corner better in right turns  than left, your spin is only good for 50 yards.  tonite there is road kill somewhere.  And I can smell it for miles around.  Dead snakes have a particular smell, like a skunk but more pungent, less sickly sweet.  the smell comes in waves with the hills, like a radio station in a car driving through the mountains.

Away from the smell, there were moments of beauty.  The landscape is reduced to large cutout shapes, the mountains to the left are a slow moving herd of dinosaurs, the houses pass like ships at sea, the windows provide the sole definition of the house’s shape.  A cascading stream, the almost full moon catches the water and lights it up, brighter than the reflective mail box reflectors that buzz by: huge round fire flies.  The water is a beacon, a series of lapis lazuli slashes at a black velvet canvas, sparkling like the interior of Joseph Cornell’s dreams.

A barn on a hill, vertical yellow ochre aluminum siding,  a single light turning it into a pimp’s pin stripes under a street corner, Baltimore, 1963.  A house with a porch light turns porch curtains into amber sheets, the silhouettes of the porch furniture becomes the bugs trapped in the amber.  My breath is ragged from the cold air, by bottle stuck in my handlebar bag, more or less out of reach, its normal spot taken by my big battery.

The road flies by.  Few cars pass, I charge up hills, barreling down the middle of the road where the pavement is smoothest.  The stream in the valley is a neon sign, blinking fitfully as my bike shakes and lurches past, my legs unable to keep up with the pace of pedaling 25 mph downhill.  The cows are playing pinochle in their barn, the chickens have a night light on, my painting teacher gets ready to leave for NYC, I see her round form gathering objects through her massive new windows.  I see Paul in his garage, listlessly wheeling his bike around, and I think about the race, and how I will have to get up at 3 Am and ride harder than I can possibly think about, faster than I believe I can, and longer than I want to.  It will be like this, but better.